I've decided to head a new project for all you bored mappers out there. While we'll almost certainly do more of these in the future, the theme of this first megawad is going to be "Retelling of Ultimate Doom."

Now I'm sure there are those of you out there going "oh gn0 a megawad," but I assure you, this is going to be easy. We're going to create this one episode at a time, so will have four groups of 8 mappers each time. We WILL be using Doom2 and the levels are going to be vanilla. Hopefully that takes the weight off of some of your shoulders. We'll be using all 32 levels normally and there will be no secret levels. Sorry.

The rules are rather simple. Each person (first come first serve!) will claim a level of the episode we're on. This is not exactly a remake of each level, we're mostly just copying the basic theme. This means that MAP03 doesn't have to resemble or even be a Toxin Refinery. In fact, there could be a complete lack of a Refinery anywhere in the wad. We're merely recreating the atmosphere and concept of Ultimate Doom, staring with EP1. The levels should look like they belong in the episode. Don't put intestine floors and blood waterfalls in the first level, please. =)

Concerning the atmosphere, there will be a limit on what kinds of monsters you can place and what powerups/guns should be available. The limitations for this particular episode will be at the bottom.

If you're willing to join, e-mail me at Kara@xfury.net, post something here, PM via the forum PMs, or contact me through ICQ (my number is in my profile). Once we have a team of eight, mapping can begin. You will have exactly ONE MONTH to finish your level. Our goal is to start on February 1st and end on March 1st. This will allow us to finish the megawad in 4-5 months. Each level must be beatable from a pistol start in Ultra-Violence without too much reliance on secrets that only you know about. Also, remember, EP1 wasn't as hard as the others, so be lenient. =)

Also, a couple quick rules. Follow the monster/item limitations. Make sure you add all player starts. The levels are vanilla, so no Boom, ZDoom, Legacy, etc effects. You're not allowed to add flats/textures/sprites unless you're changing the sky. Music replacements are allowed. DeHacked or any other modification is not.

Now, the specifics of this episode. Anything not listed is not allowed, but is subject to inquiry and may change.

I assume you mean DOOM and not The Ultimate DOOM, as doom2.wad has but 3 skies, which means you can't have more than three "episodes." Similarly, you should probably make the episodes like this: E1: map01-11, E2: map12-20, E3: map21-30. You're also going to have to import doom.wad's resources... it almost makes more sense to use The Ultimate DOOM for such a project.

Shit. The map I just got done for my project is E3m2 and fits it too. Unfortuantely, it has three new wall textures. (which BTW, do look like they fit Doom. (bloody sp_rock1, support3 = 16x128 and vertical version) But it's also very hard (for me anyways).

And we're doing Doom II because I want to see clever uses of the new monsters and the SSG. Admittedly, E1 isn't going to be amazing since it only allows to extra monsters, but it should be interesting by the end.

We still have five spots open, someone else sign up!

Also, I'm in four projects. This one, I'm only supervising. Grind is on hold until I get an enemy sprite. I'm pretty much done with Mock2, and ZooM is on the side. I think ~2 projects is pretty good.

You aren't thinking about what I said about the skies, are you? If you make 4 sets of 8 maps they will not show up well with the three skies. And there is no way to alter the way the skies show up unless you use an advanced engine along with a special lump (mapinfo, fragglescript, etc.)

Another comment (maybe just stating the obvious): In Doom2, if you want to force a pistol start on the first map of each "episode", you will need to arrange for the player to be killed while exiting the final map of each of the first three episodes. There are plenty of ways to do this, the simplest perhaps being to have a switch that triggers a boss brain to be crushed while also crushing the player, or exploding nearby barrels, etc. It would be nice to have some variety though. Remember that if you do it using a voodoo doll (like Ultimate Doomer did in 007LTSD), then it will not work in Legacy.

1) We know about the skies, myk, and we'll probably just make them all mountains, if not ALL the same mountains. We can't do three episodes because then we'd need 12 people each time, and you can see how much trouble we're having just getting 8. To be honest, I don't think anyone's going to care much about the skies. We'll probably do SOMETHING with them, though.

2) The other fish is dark dark dark gray. I'm going to change it so it's easier to see. I was going to make it a black fish but couldn't think of a good color to make the background.

3) It's unlikely that we'll make people die between episodes. I mean, why would you go from the moon down into Hell itself and leave all your guns except for your pistol behind?

4) I can't say whether or not our mappers will use voodoo dolls. If they do, we'll just warn not to play the levels in Legacy.

I see. I'll bother you a bit more with another idea that occurred to me, though.

Finding 8 different people to work on it, and actually finish an episode, let alone all of them, is very hard. You may want to top that at 5 (you already have 4) but suggest instead of one map, 2 smaller maps and give them 45 days to finish them, or 2 months if really necessary. Also, once E1 is done maybe E2 only relies on some of those mappers and not all of them, you never know if they might all want to go all the way, and someone may want to join later. Like that you could have it done in 4-6 months and you wouldn't need so many people. Plus you might be able to use 3 skies more easily.

Nanami said:
3) It's unlikely that we'll make people die between episodes. I mean, why would you go from the moon down into Hell itself and leave all your guns except for your pistol behind?

Well that's what Doomguy did; ask him! Perhaps "the portal cannot be used by the living", or something.

I mentioned it because that's the way Ultimate Doom worked, and it meant that the gameplay could be better controlled: in each E?M1 the player started with just the pistol, etc. This could be regarded as one advantage of the UD episode format.

BTW, in Eternal Doom they had the player die upon exit from map13 so that they could enforce have a pistol start for map14, so it's not wholly unprecidented.

I'm now pretty into the level I'm making and don't want to trash it. However, you're QUITE welcome to do a level for E2 when this episode is done. Keep in touch, okay? We'd love to have you map for us.